3Doodler (3d print show talk)

The 3doodler booth had a lot of success with kids and adults stopping and trying out the pen, so being really curious about it (is it just a toy or is it really useful?) I hopped in to listen to the talk by two of the owners

Starting out with the story on how 3doodler came about, they were looking into robots for children that could walk. After this experience 2 of the ideators decided to start a company by themselves for toys, and used a lot 3d printing.

When using a 3d printer and having an error in the output they were discussing that it would be nice to just pick up the extruder and fix the object. So they started working on this idea and had a prototype that looked awful and was heavy but it worked, so they moved to China to find a manufacturer. (Speaking mandarine they had more ease in the choice of a suitable partner). Passing from a product made from various elements to an assembly line product was a challenge and everything had to be re-thought.

Then on kickstarter they had a huge success raising 2,344,000$ and had to produce an incredible amount of pens. 20-25,000 units should be shipped by the end of the year.

Demo time: 2 buttons for 2 different speeds, if pressed together they retract the plastic so colours can be changed easily. Works with PLA and ABS sticks of filament, the ones sold by the firm are made in USA and UK. the demo maybe is not that impressive (the legs of the little man tend to detach) but the following pictures made by artist and normal users are really great and can be structured in a way they can move.

Another interesting idea is to use structures as moulds to doodle on it (and doodling the names on glasses at dinner parties!)

Another artist used the hot tip of the pen to carve the plastic

On the website there are hundreds of stencils available to download and can be used to create many things that can be also joined to make 3d objects. The3doodle.com/community

Future? They had contacts by engineers who wanted to use this product to sketch an idea as a base for discussion before starting out with CAD projects and spending money on 3d printing.

Visually impared were immediately interested. With this object they can make braille. They can sign and then feel their signature. There already is graph paper that has bumped lines but with this you could write braille and add lines and feel the different positions on the paper.

Jewelly: can be used to make sketches even though it's very simple it's perfect for the first stage, the same idea has been picked up by stage designers and stop motion animators to convey the first idea of their project.

Lab scientist have thought to use it to sketch lab ideas and equipment projects.

Question time, and much of the interest is also on how to make a successful kickstarter campaign. Many useful hints on planning really well your campaign before going on kickstarter, making a really good video that catches the attention in the first 10 sec.